The beast isn’t starving

I caught a lot of flak from conservatives when I wrote in an op-ed that the so-called Bush tax-cuts were a fraud. If spending isn’t cut then in the long run taxes can’t be cut either. Since spending has gone up under Bush, all he has done, I argued, is to raise our future taxes (at precisely the wrong time too given the coming fiscal problems created by demography) . Conservatives complained that I missed the strategic beauty of the Bush plan. A tax cut, they said, will keep spending down, it will “starve the beast.” Well Bush is now asking for another $87 billion to fight the war in Iraq, employment is down everywhere but in the federal government where it is higher than under Clinton, and Bush is already touting how his administration is responsible for the largest increase in Medicare in its 38 year history. Apparently, on the Bush diet you can eat all you want and still lose weight.

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